Saturday, September 13, 2014

Your Google Voice Number Can Ring Multiple
OBi Devices

Did you know you can use a single Google account on multiple OBi2 (OBi200 and OBi202) universal adapter devices and OBi1000 IP phones...and on incoming calls, all of your OBi devices' will ring?

When
somebody calls your Google Voice number, not only will the regular land line
and/or mobile phones you have set-up in your Google Voice account settings ring, but phones
attached to your OBi2 Series VoIP phone adapters and your OBi1000 Series IP phones will ring as well.

To use this
feature, use the OBiTALK
web portal to set up two or more OBi2 Series or OBi1000 Series VoIP devices with the same Google account. You may also use Google Hangouts on your computer as a Google Voice endpoint. This endpoint will also ring when someone calls your Google Voice number.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Obihai has great news for everyone using Google Voice!

Google Voice is now Officially Supported on OBi VoIP devices.

Obihai is excited to announce official support for Google Voice. With a Google Voice account and a companion OBi device you can make and receive VoIP calls on a regular telephone. To get started, just login to the OBiTALK website, add your OBi device and select Google Voice as your service. You’ll then confirm your account with Google, and within minutes, you will be making and receiving calls from the comfort and convenience of your home phone. “With a Google Voice account configured on an OBi device, users will not only get all the great collaboration tools and app integration with Google Voice, they will also be able to enjoy many premium calling features, free calling within the U.S. and Canada and super-low cost international calling – all from the comfort of their home phone," said Jan Fandrianto, President and CEO of Obihai.

OBi Devices Make a Great Companion for Google Voice

• Place and Receive Calls with Your Google Voice Number on Regular Phones

You can now enjoy all the benefits of Google Voice on your OBi device, including features like personalized greetings, call blocking, SMS to email, and voicemail transcription. OBi users can also take advantage of Google Voice’s low calling rates. Today, calling the U.S. is free from the U.S. & Canada and 1¢ per minute from everywhere else. International calling rates are also really low, with per minute rates starting at 1¢ to Beijing, Bangalore, Mexico, Brazil and 150 other destinations – with no connection charge.* What's more, OBi users get premium features like Caller ID, telemarketer (spam) call blocking, call waiting, 3-way calling, and voicemail that acts like email – including voice message alerts by text and email with speech to text transcription.

The OBi device is a phone adapter which allows anyone to make and receive calls with a regular cordless or corded 'house' phone. Calling can be done by dialing a regular phone number. Receiving calls is easy. When someone dials your Google Voice number, the phone connected to your OBi device will ring. The OBi phone will ring if the user’s Google Voice number is called or if the user’s Google ID is called via Hangouts or Gmail. Also, since Google Voice does not support 911 calling, for a small fee, the OBi device may be set-up with a dedicated E911 VoIP service.

Saturday, August 2, 2014

Anveo E911 Service is Available as an Auto-Configured
Service on OBiTALK

The OBiTALK portal and Anveo service can get you set-up with 911 calling on your OBi for just $15 / year.

Here's what you'll get with Anveo's E911 service for OBiTALK Devices:
- Easy Automatic Configuration of 911 Service on Your OBi
- No Need to Configure the OBi Manually!
- 911 Calls Go to Your Public Safety Answering Point with Your Address Attached
- Emergency Call-backs and Reverse 911 are Routed Straight to Your OBi Device
- E911 with Alerts: Alert you or another person whenever 911 call was placed.
911 Alerts can be automatically sent using Email, SMS/Text Message, phone call.
- No Need to Purchase a Phone Number
- Great Compliment to Google Voice Users (Because Google Does Not Support 911
Calling)

Easy Set-Up

All you will need to do is
select the "Anveo E911 Sign-Up" button on your OBi's Device
Configuration page in the OBiTALK
web portal.

You will be prompted to select an unused Voice Service slot with which to
configure the Anveo E911 service. You may only select a service slot which is
not currently being used with another VoIP service.

After this, you will be redirected to Anveo's web site to verify your home
address and complete the sign-up.

As long as everything is in-order, your OBi will be automatically configured
for emergency services calling.

Saturday, May 17, 2014

- 5/17/14 Article -

The Google Voice Service is Still
Working on My OBi! How come?

At the end of last year, Google Inc. announced that the
open and documented XMPP communication protocol would be abandoned in favor
of a new, proprietary way to do real-time voice, video and instant messaging
communications. The time-line for the migration to this new way was not
stated.

At about the same time, but separately, Google stated third-party
applications should stop supporting XMPP by May 15th 2014. Now
that this date has passed, like you, we have observed Google services using
XMPP are still connected and working, e.g. you can still place and receive
calls using a Gmail account configured on your OBi device. It is important to
note, this does not change the previous statements from Obihai that we no
longer support direct connections to Google Voice on OBi devices. We strongly
recommend all OBi owners using the Google Voice service obtain a new service
to ensure continued, uninterrupted calling from the phone connected to the
OBi.

Fortunately, there are several OBiTALK Approved Service Provider (ASP)
choices available to all OBi device owners for Internet VoIP phone services.
These services are easy to sign-up for and configure automatically on an OBi
device. They also come at a great price - with all fees and taxes included.

OBiTALK Approved Service Provider
Updates

OneSuite:

OneSuite has been added as an OBiTALK ASP. OneSuite has a unique pay-as-you
go offer for Obi device owners called SuiteAdvantage. This offer does not
include 911. In addition to using your OBi device, you will also be able
to make cheap calls and receive unlimited calls using OneSuite's smartphone
app or computer softphone. No hidden fees, no setup fees, no contract!
Sign-up for SuiteAdvantage with at least $10 credit in a OneSuite prepaid
account and receive a 6-month free subscription to OneSuite's online fax service.

More OBiTALK
ASP Partners:

Anveo:

With annual plans starting at $39.99 including E911, Anveo
offers voice services for home and small business users. Anveo also provides
free porting of Google Voice numbers to their service.

Phone Power:

Phone Power, one of the largest VoIP providers in North
America, offers exclusive calling plans to Obihai customers. Starting at
$34.99 per year including E911, OBi device owners can easily set-up a Phone
Power service using the OBiTALK portal.

Coming
Soon: RingTo, a new OBiTALK approved
Service Provider with Absolutely FREE Calling!

We would like to welcome "RingTo" to the OBiTALK
Approved Service Provider program. The RingTo offer will be for customers who
have purchased a new OBi100, OBi110, OBi200, OBi202 or OBi5vs series device
after May 1st 2014 and have a Google Voice or other valid US phone number
that can be ported to RingTo.

What's different about RingTo from the other OBiTALK approved service
providers, in terms of the initial setup, is that you have to port your own
phone number -landline, mobile or VoIP- to the RingTo service. You also need
to purchase your own 911 service separately. RingTo is a FREE Service that
allows you to untether your phone number. RingTo will provide the following
to new OBi device owners:

Free
SMS

Free
Voicemail

Free
Call Forwarding

Free
calling in North America

When Ringto is available as an OBiTALK ASP, here is what
you will need to do to see if Ringto is available to you:

Check
if your number is eligible to be ported to Ringto

Get
911 configured on your OBi device

Port
your US number to Ringto

Start
making calls!

The RingTo ASP offer at OBiTALK will be available inside the next few weeks.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Anveo and Phone Power the First VoIP Providers Offering Seamless Set-Up of Voice and Fax Services to OBi Device Owners for Under $40 per Year

Obihai Technology, a leading endpoint device manufacturer in the Voice over IP (VoIP) industry and maker of best-selling OBi universal VoIP adapters has announced a new program that will allow service providers to provision VoIP services on OBi VoIP phone adapters and IP phones seamlessly.

The OBiTALK Approved Service Provider (ASP) program comes at an opportune time for service providers and OBi device owners alike. Currently, hundreds of thousands of homes and small businesses have an OBi device used with the free Google Voice™ Service. The Google service uses a communication protocol called XMPP to connect the OBi to the service. Late last year, Google announced as of May 15th, XMPP would no longer be supported for third-party VoIP applications. With that, after May 15th Obihai will no longer support the Google Voice service on its OBi devices.

Starting today, OBi device owners can switch their voice service from Google Voice to an OBiTALK ASP partner easily, by going to the www.OBiTALK.com portal and selecting the Approved Service Providers link. Listed there are multiple service options, including offers from Anveo and Phone Power available for the exclusive use of OBi device owners. Service plans start at under $40 per year and include all the features needed for a primary-line voice service – including E911 emergency services calling. More ASP partners are expected to be approved and added in the coming months.

“The OBiTALK ASP program provides a great way for VoIP service providers to offer services to Obihai’s customers that meet their specific communication needs for home and small office usage,” said Obihai President and CEO, Jan Fandrianto. He went on to say, “End users will love it because they maintain control of the services running on their OBi. The OBi device is not locked to a single service provider.”

The OBiTALK ASP program allows the provision of an unlocked OBi device purchased for BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) services use. Specifically, the models supported by the OBiTALK ASP program are the OBi100, OBi110, OBi200 and OBi202. The OBiTALK service API (Application Programming Interface) provides the magic happening under the covers of the OBiTALK portal. Via a secure API connected to the service provider’s subscriber sign-up process, devices are able to make and receive calls minutes from when the subscriber initially selects their service. The combination of a subscriber-purchased device, eCommerce fulfillment and the shared-support model employed between Obihai and the service provider allows the service provider to offer a complete phone service at a low price yet maintain high first-time installation success rates.

For consumers, another valuable element of the OBiTALK ASP program is the advertised prices for OBiTALK ASP partner offerings include all taxes and fees. Too often, consumers are met with an unwelcome charge because they did not see or understand the fine print or became confused as to the final price of the service. With OBiTALK ASP partner offerings, consumers will have a choice amongst several clearly-priced services made available exclusively to OBi device owners.

For those who want to continue to use their Google Voice number with a newly configured OBiTALK ASP partner’s service, there are a couple options. The first is to port the Google Voice number to the service provider’s network. This may incur a porting fee and take time to complete. The second way to keep using a Google Voice number is easy and instant. The OBi owner enters a new phone number assigned by the service provider into the Google Voice “forwards calls to” phone settings. Once this is done, calls to the OBi owner’s Google Voice number will be forwarded directly to the OBi device, ringing their attached phone normally. When making calls, if offered by the ASP partner, OBi customers will be able to set up a custom outgoing Caller ID number, e.g. their Google Voice number, during the sign-up process on the ASP partner’s website.

Gmail and Google Voice are trademarks of Google, Inc. Other company names mentioned herein are the registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.

- 12/31/13 Article -

A Full-Year of an Affordable and Amazingly Powerful Home Phone Solution

Obihai would like
to share what’s been going on since our last article about the impending end, in May, of
XMPP-based calling using the Google Voice™ service.

Innovation and Partnership

We have some exciting
and important news to share with you, which we believe will further enhance the
value and flexibility that comes with an OBi VoIP device. Over the
past several months, our engineers have been working on extending the OBiTALK
cloud-configuration API to third-party Internet Telephony Service Providers
(ITSPs). Via this secure configuration and programming interface, Bring
Your Own Device (BYOD) VoIP services will be even easier to set-up and use on
Obihai products. Along with the engineering work, we have also been in
discussions with several of our ITSP partners on plans to transition existing
Google Voice + OBi customers.We
wanted to make sure that OBi users retained the power to leverage a BYOD
service from a participating ITSP, keeping intact a full-featured phone service
that can be used as a primary or secondary phone line for homes or small businesses.

Coming Soon to OBiTALK.com

In a few weeks, we
will announce the first ITSP partnership with specifics about the service,
features and a price that will delight current OBi users and drive many more
people to use an OBi and a BYOD VoIP service with their broadband Internet connection.

Here is what we
expect to provide OBi customers in cooperation with our ITSP partner.
OBi device owners will be able to sign-up for a voice service plan provided by
the ITSP, for as little as $39.99 a YEAR. That’sonly $3.33 per month! Included in the plan will be; a new phone
number, a set-number of outbound calling minutes, unlimited inbound calling,
E911 emergency service calling, telemarketer blocking, and many call features like voicemail, caller
ID, 3-party conference calls, call waiting, etc. And by the way, this low price will include
all taxes and fees associated with the service.

Your Google Voice Number

If you want to keep
using your Google Voice (GV) number, there are two
ways to do this:

1. You can sign-up
for an ITSP account with a new number, like the $40/year service described
above, and use this number in your Google Voice account’s “forward calls to” phone
settings. Calls to your GV number will be automatically forwarded to your
ITSP account number, and the phone connected to the OBi will ring. Calls
from the OBi can be dialed normally and you will have the option to have the
ITSP send your GV number as your calling number, e.g. the number that appears
as the caller ID on phone of the party you call.

2. You can
port your GV number to an ITSP service provider, like the $40/year service
described above. There is a $3 fee paid to Google to port-out the number
and there may be a fee from the ITSP for porting-in the number.
Once your GV number is ported to the ITSP, all inbound and outbound calling is
provided by the ITSP.

Maintain Control and Optimize Your Investment

Unlike ‘locked’
devices from other VoIP companies, unlocked Obihai VoIP devices can be used
with a multitude of services.This protects
your investment in the OBi device and gives you the most flexibility and choice
as to what services to use with your OBi. At just over $3 per month for
service, an unlocked OBi VoIP device with an ITSP’s BYOD service is the most
flexible, most money-saving and ultimately, the most powerful home and small
business phone solution that a smart VoIP user can buy. With expert support
directly from Obihai and its ITSP partners, OBi users will continue to win
with consistent and high-quality service.

Recently Google announced the
end of support for XMPP based
calling with Google Voice. This will happen on May 15, 2014 – that’s over 6
months from today. Since your OBi device uses XMPP to communicate with Google
servers, the end of support will directly impact how your OBi device can be
used with your Gmail account and its associated Google Voice phone number.Unfortunately, you will no longer be able to use
the Google Voice communication service to make calls using the phone connected
to your OBi device. Also, the ability to receive calls to your Google
Voice number, directly from Google’s service, will not be possible.

Fortunately, your OBi device may
be used with many Internet phone service providers – all providing very
low-cost calling to the USA, Canada and almost every country in the
world. Most offer subscriptions and pay-as-you-go plans starting from
$1.30 per month (including E911) and rates starting at 1 cent per minute to the
USA and Canada. The OBiTALK web portal can be used to easily configure an
account from any of these services on your OBi. Of course, OBi-to-OBi calls,
using the OBi number printed on the device, remain completely free.

Your OBi Will Continue to
Deliver Valuable Features and Awesome Savings

So, what does this mean if you
currently use a phone connected to an OBi device configured with your Gmail
account and the Google Voice service? First, your OBi will continue
working as it does today – with calls to your Google Voice number ringing the
phone and use of Google’s service for connecting calls to the numbers you dial.
Over the coming weeks, we will provide more detailed information, including
easy to follow, step-by-step instructions on how you can keep using your OBi
and your current phone number to keep your home phone bill extremely low, yet
retain the power and flexibility that comes from using the OBi and your choice
of services – even Google Voice.

Obihai, a leader in the VoIP
communications industry, will continue to invest in new innovations and
technology that will directly benefit the individuals, families and businesses
using Obihai products. Your OBi device is a very valuable investment and
our mission remains to help you save money, make it more convenient to stay
connected to your friends and family and ultimately empower you with greater
choices for communication.

Services and Service
Providers – Many to Choose From

Here is an alphabetical list of
some of the more popular Internet phone service providers that can be used with
your OBi device:

These service providers also
provide phone numbers from almost every North American area code – even
international phone numbers. They also offer number porting, so you can
keep your old phone number for use with your OBi. What’s more, most of
these service providers have E911 built-in to their calling plans. Also, you
have many choices as to how you want to pay for your service – Pay-as-you-go,
monthly, yearly subscriptions.

More information about using the
OBi with a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) service can be found here.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Anveo E911 Service is Available as an Auto-Configured Service on OBiTALK

The OBiTALK portal and Anveo service can get you set-up with 911 calling on your OBi for just $15 / year.

Here's what you'll get with Anveo's E911 service for OBiTALK Devices:
- Easy Automatic Configuration of 911 Service on Your OBi
- No Need to Configure the OBi Manually!
- 911 Calls Go to Your Public Safety Answering Point with Your Address Attached
- Emergency Call-backs and Reverse 911 are Routed Straight to Your OBi Device
- E911 with Alerts: Alert you or another person whenever 911 call was placed.
911 Alerts can be automatically sent using Email, SMS/Text Message, phone call.
- No Need to Purchase a Phone Number
- Great Compliment to Google Voice Users (Because Google Does Not Support 911 Calling)

Easy Set-Up

All you will need to do is select the "Anveo E911 Sign-Up" button on your OBi's Device Configuration page in the OBiTALK web portal.

You will be prompted to select an unused Voice Service slot with which to configure the Anveo E911 service. You may only select a service slot which is not currently being used with another VoIP service.

After this, you will be redirected to Anveo's web site to verify your home address and complete the sign-up.

As long as everything is in-order, your OBi will be automatically configured for emergency services calling.

-SP2/InboundCallRoute
= {1001>:vg3}(Note: You can just add
this rule to the beginning too.)

-OBiTALK
Service/InboundCallRoute = {>1001:SP2(1001@local_client)}
(Note: You can just
add this rule to the beginning too.)

On OBi #2, set up the following parameters:

-ITSP
Profile A/General/SignalingProtocol = SIP (default)

-ITSP
Profile A/SIP/Proxy = 192.168.15.18

-ITSP
Profile A/SIP/X_SpoofCallerID = yes (or checked)

-SP1/X_RegisterEnable
= yes (or as required by the IP-PBX)

-SP1/AuthUserName
= 1001

-SP1/AuthPassword
= AnyPhonePassword (or as required by the IP-PBX)

-SP1/InboundCallRoute
= {>(1001):pp}

-OBiTALK
Service/InboundCallRoute = {1001>:sp1}

On the Remote IP phone behind OBi #1, set up the
following parameters (or the equivalent on other phone models):

-EXT
1/Proxy = 500111101.pnn.obihai.com:5061

-EXT
1/User ID 1001

-Ext
1/Password = AnyPhonePassword

-EXT
1/Register Expires = 60

-EXT
1/Register = yes

-SIP/Send
Resp To Src Port = yes

Notes:

You can add up to 4 SIP IP Phones behind an OBi202 in a
remote office (e.g. OBi #1 in the last example) - one for each of the SPx
service. To extend the last example, we can add another IP phone with the
extension 1002 behind OBi #1, this time using SP3. The set-up for SP3 mirrors
that of SP2 in the example, i.e. the same ITSP Profile B can be used for SP3
also. To make this work, just add the following rule to the
OBiTALK/InboundCallRoute: {>1002:SP3(1001@local_client)}

On OBi #2, configure another IP-PBX account for extension
1002, say on SP2 (set it up like SP1; the same ITSP Profile A can be used for
SP2 also), and add the following rule to SP2/InboundCallRoute: {>(1002):pp},

...and the following rule to OBiTALK
Service/InboundCallROute:{1002>:sp2}

Note also that the same OBi #2 may be used to support up
to 4 different remote IP phones, in the same or different remote offices.